The Heart of Christ heals the contrite of heart

"Consider the perfection of the contrition found in the Heart of Christ. He could not be touched with sin, but 'He was reputed with sinners, and upon Him was laid the iniquity of us all.' And for all of us He made reparation and He sorrowed, including in His sorrow every quality found in our far weaker contrition.

Contrition should be interior, in the heart. 'Rend your hearts, not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God.' The rending of the Heart of Christ is witnessed to by a thousand messengers who have hurried out by every way they could to tell us in a language that cannot lie - the language of blood - that the sorrow of sin is crushing His Heart. The rending of His Heart is eloquent in the words in which He voices His contrition: 'Not my will, but Thine be done.' From the will - that is, from the heart - came that act of contrition.

Contrition must be supernatural. God must enter into the sorrow for sin. The Heart of Christ expressly excluded all thought of self, all motives that led away from God. Even the passing of the chalice that God's justice held to His lips was not to be effected by His will. God's will might remove it; Christ's will would not. So then, the draining of the chalice must be accomplished with the purest unselfishness: 'Not my will, but Thine be done.'

Contrition should be sovereign. Never did a heart have to make more fearful reckoning between the worth of God and the price of sin than the Heart of Christ made, and never was the infinite value of God's law asserted more emphatically. On one hand was the whole Passion to come, with all its tortures of body and soul; on the other hand was God's justice. Christ accepted the sorrow, the suffering, the disgrace and death. He laid His Heart upon the altar of God's justice and was Himself the priest who completed the sovereign holocaust: 'Not my will, but Thine be done.'

Contrition must be universal. Was there a single sin exempted from God's will? Was there a single wish of God's will that was not embraced by the Heart of Christ? Was there a single pang of pain, a single twinge of sorrow, a single drop of His blood excluded from the generous offer of Christ? There can be only one answer to these questions. The 'my' of Christ included all that the 'Thy' of the will He addressed included: 'Not my will, but Thine be done.'

It is, then, that great act of contrition which sweetens the chalices of our penitence; it is the signature of Christ's blood which gives value to what would be worthless paper in our soul's sorrow; it is the Heart of Christ which heals the contrite of heart."

-- How to love as Jesus loves: unlocking the treasures of Christ's Sacred Heart by Francis P Donnelly, SJ